Page 63 of Rapture's Edge (Night Prowler 3)
A tingle of recognition snapped her head around and pulled her out of the morass she’d been lingering in with an abrupt jolt, as i
f she’d been plucked from quicksand. Her heart began to pound. Her hands began to shake.
Because there he was. Walking slowly toward the ticket booth at the south foot of the tower marked pilier sud, queuing up like a regular person with all the other tourists, there he was, dressed identically to her in boots and black leather, a long coat with the collar turned up against the wind.
He stood out like a lion in a flock of dozing lambs.
A lion that carried, in one large hand, a small parcel wrapped in butcher paper.
Instead of the elevators with most of the tourists who preferred to avoid exposure to the cold, Demetrius took the narrow stairs in the south leg of the tower to the second floor. She watched him as he ascended through the open latticed network of iron until he reached the wide platform. Moving with slow deliberation, shouldering through the thinning crowd who darted aside to let him pass like a school of minnows fleeing from a shark, he went to the railing and looked out. He closed his eyes and stayed that way for several moments, unmoving, his coat flapping and billowing around his spread legs, while Eliana watched from her hidden perch, feeling as if her heart would claw itself out of her chest.
Then he turned his head, and across the distance his eyes found hers, as if he knew where she’d been hiding all along. As if he’d felt her watching.
She stood. She stared back at him. Even with the distance, everything was between them, palpable as rain, bright as summer sunlight. His gaze was heat across her face, his dark eyes burned, just staring at her, not a muscle moving, searing intensity and the crackle of invisible flame. She felt pinned by that look, the stark longing in it, the hunger, raw and real. She felt powerless against it, and suddenly a wave of anguish rose up in her, a longing to match his own, and she had to look away.
She turned to the stairs of the old chimney and began the winding descent down.
When she finally stood beside him on the second-floor observation deck and looked out over the vast, sparkling majesty of Paris on a winter evening, she had herself a little bit more under control.
D didn’t turn to look at her. He acknowledged her presence with a slight bow of his head, but that was all. They stood silently for a while, shoulder width apart, listening to people chatter in a dozen different languages, feeling the wind on their faces. Up here it was colder, the flakes of snow more biting than below.
“I have this memory of you,” he said in a low, solemn voice, still looking out over the city. She kept her own eyes on the view as well as he continued to speak. “You were sixteen, maybe seventeen. It was the winter solstice, and everyone had gathered in the great room after the ceremony in the temple for the feast of Horus.”
Eliana closed her eyes, remembering the cavernous great room they used on festival days, the smell of hot beeswax and incense, the glow of a thousand candles in iron braziers and chandeliers, the shouting and laughter, the heat of so many bodies pressed close together at long wooden tables as they feasted on suckling pig and roasted beef and delicacies from all over the world, brought in to celebrate the birthday of their patron god.
“You were sitting with your father and brother at the main table. I was standing behind you, against the wall, on duty as always. The Bellatorum had drawn straws to see who would stand guard during the feast, and I was the one who drew the short straw. It didn’t matter anyway; the rest of them had women they wanted to go to, but I had no one, so I didn’t mind.
“But you kept glancing back at me, with this worried look on your face. I didn’t dare look at you, but I couldn’t figure out why the king’s daughter, the precious spem futuri, would be paying the slightest attention to me.”
Hope for the future: that’s what the elders had called her, though she never knew exactly why. He went on and his voice grew softer, tinged with something close to awe.
“Then when your father was distracted by someone who’d come to speak with him, you called one of the servants to you and passed her something. You whispered something to her, and I could tell she was trying to talk you out of whatever you’d said. She looked very angry, but you insisted, and eventually she made some pretense to walk by me and hand me what you had given her.”
D glanced down at her. “An apple. You gave her an apple to give to me.”
“You looked hungry,” Eliana whispered. “You looked miserable, standing there alone. I thought you might like something to eat.”
“You kept sending her back, every chance you could, too, didn’t you? Pieces of fruit and cheese, bread, candy.”
“You wouldn’t eat any of it. I had to keep trying until I found something you liked.”
He turned to her, staring down at her with all the intensity from before still burning in his eyes. “I liked all of it. I couldn’t eat it because I was on duty, but I liked all of it. You were the only person in that room of thousands who gave a damn about me, the one person with the least reason to. You were kind to me. You noticed me. You looked at me, when everyone else went to great lengths to avoid doing that. Everyone else was terrified of me, and yet you never were. You smiled at me whenever we passed. You said hello.” His voice dropped. “You said my name. Said it like you liked it…like you liked me. That was the beginning for me. Just like that apple, you were this perfect, delicious thing I hungered for with every cell in my body, but was forbidden to eat.”
“Stop,” she whispered, frozen in place. “Please. Stop.”
They stood like that, not moving, a foot apart, his gaze searing, hers trained on some spot in the distance because she couldn’t bear to look at him.
Finally, around the lump in her throat, she said, “You brought it?”
From the corner of her eye she saw him nod. She held out her hand. He placed the paper-wrapped bundle in it, and she closed her fingers around it, hard. “I’m leaving now.”
“If—afterward—I’ll be at the same place I brought you after the police station. The safe house. You remember where it is?”
She glanced at him, her eyes as freezing as the wind. “I won’t come. Don’t wait.”
He said nothing, just looked at her. She slowly backed away, clutching the parcel to her chest. “I won’t come,” she said again, but he didn’t even nod.
Eliana turned and fled.
